Beyond Equality: Women Leaders in Higher Education

This phenomenological study of the experiences of women leaders in higher education emphasizes that the pursuit of gender equity has not delivered the anticipated cultural shifts for women. The lenses of structure, culture, and nurture serve as a conceptual framework to better understand the expectations and experiences of women leaders. Women in this study face intersectional identities (like race and gender but also as a working woman and a mother). Three archetypes of women's leadership orientation emerged from the study of women academic leaders' experiences: Passers, Pushers, and Peacekeepers. The three archetypes provide helpful distinction to the leadership orientations of women. Yet across all three archetypes, women endure and ultimately succeed by exercising responsive agency--rejecting structural and relational passivity, embracing the nuances of the environment, and capitalizing on the leader's strengths. As an alternative to equality, this book proposes responsive agency--an embodied theological response to gender oppression--as a way forward for women looking to advance in the workplace. The analysis into the three profiles reveals that equality is simply not enough. Each of the chapters shows equality to be necessary but insufficient, and invites women academics pursuing leadership to embrace responsive agency.